


The Memory Of You Emerges

by cricket_aria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Endgame, Time Wimey Shape Shifty Antics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26369698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: In the last few minutes before Bruce uses the gauntlet Tony finds a place alone to try to make a call home.Tony Stark taking a few minutes alone just before his death is the one spot where the timeline might be safely altered without any visible change.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark, mentioned Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 58
Collections: We Die Like Fen 4: We Lived to Die Afen





	The Memory Of You Emerges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HogwartsToAlexandria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/gifts).



Smoking was one of the few things that had never been one of Tony’s vices, but with five minutes until go time he was starting to understand what made a person reach for a pack. His hands were itching for something to do, but it was all already done, the ten minutes Bruce had asked for to do whatever mental preparation he needed before putting on their gauntlet not enough time for even Tony Stark to do one last round of tinkering. 

For lack of other options he’d just settled into an empty room and was flipping his phone in his hands, resisting the urge to call Pep and ask her to get Morgan to the compound as fast as she could, then stall Bruce until they made it. He wanted to see the look on his little girl’s face when the universe suddenly became twice as full of life than she’d ever known it to be. He also knew that he couldn’t possibly let her within a country mile of those stones, so that was some wishful thinking that would need to stay right where it was.

Maybe he’d call Pep and ask her to find an excuse to take Morgan down into the basement to play until he got home instead. Her expression wouldn’t be any less real if life had been back for a couple hours and she just hadn’t known about it yet. …Except that the basement hadn’t been created yet when all that life vanished, and if it returned right where it had vanished from he would be dooming his daughter to a sudden rain of worms. The house itself would probably end up full of birds and squirrels and who knew what else. Possibly halfway through walls that hadn’t been there at the time.

Clearly he was going to need to give Bruce a note to instruct the stones to return all that life into safe locations while he was at it.

His thoughts had moved onto the next potential phone call—where outdoors to tell Pepper to take Morgan that would be least likely to end in her being traumatized by dead fuzzy woodland creatures—when his thoughts were scattered to the wind by a voice, still familiar after all those years, saying, “Tony?” Emotion cracked his name, though in that moment his ears mistook it for puberty.

‘Those bastards did it without me,’ was his first stunned thought when he’d managed to gather them back together, followed closely by an angrier, ‘Those bastards did it without me so they could _undo everything_ ,’ when he turned and actually saw Peter standing there. He was clearly older than he had been, and man changed even beyond what Tony would have thought five years could do.

Yet, he still remembered Morgan. Still remembered everything about his life with Pepper. If Bruce had actually undone everything there was no way that’d be the case, would it? Even if they arranged it so the rest of them remembered everything, they would have _made sure_ that he forgot rather than face down just how enraged they had to know it would make him.

Could it have been that all that time the people they’d lost were still living out their lives in some different dimension, aging alongside them and assuming all along that they’d been the ones left behind? And, if they had been, did the stones take everything that might have happened to them into account when bringing them back, or had his desire to let his own daughter and every other child born in the previous five years live just lead to untold multitudes of other children being abandoned across that other universe when their parents were suddenly pulled back home?

Before he could spiral into some existential crisis over whether he’d once again managed to make the world a worse place out of the best of intentions his thoughts were shaken out of him all over again when Peter said, “Oh my god, Tony,” crossed the space between them with one easy leap, and slammed him mouth over Tony’s.

It took Tony much too long to remember that he shouldn’t allow himself to enjoy Peter kissing him. It wasn’t like back when he’d outright refused to let himself acknowledge the occasional fantasy he had when he was too close to half-asleep to police his own brain. Like back when if Peter had reached the more appropriate age he clearly was now without five years of interruption between them Tony might have been free to enjoy learning that Pete was much more likely to slide his tongue into Tony’s mouth without needing coaxing than he’d ever imagined. He was married. He had a wife, he had a daughter, he could not get caught up in a sudden make-out session with a decidedly not-teenaged Peter Parker.

He was pretty sure that Pep would understand that the reason he didn’t yank away even after remembering that was that he was still shell-shocked about Peter being there at all.

Before he could do anything worse, like grabbing the kid and yanking him closer, they were interrupted by another voice that he hadn’t heard in five years dryly saying, “Thrilling though you must find this philandering, we are on a time crunch here gentlemen.”

Peter yanked away from him as if burned, which really should have been Tony’s move. He shouldn’t have followed Peter with his mouth, not even for the half a moment it took before he caught himself and disguised it as a small sway from the sudden lack of support. “Tony— Mr. Stark, I mean, I am _so_ sorry,” Peter spluttered out quickly, and suddenly those added years on his face almost seemed to melt away, “I know, I know, I shouldn’t have, but! We don’t know if this is going to work, and if it doesn’t then I just, I didn’t want to… Not.”

“It’s fine, Pete. It’s fine,” he said, awkwardly patting his shoulder while feeling completely lost. He looked past him to Strange, who also looked older though it mostly showed in how much heavier the white streaks shooting through his hair had become, “Care to fill me in on what deadline you’re running against here? Because I know why _my_ time was short, but it looks like that’s not the case anymore anyway.”

“No, you’re thinking of the same thing,” Strange told him. “In three minutes the remaining Avengers will gather so Dr. Banner can use the Infinity Stones. We need to be gone before then.”

“So this is… what exactly? The two of you felt like getting back ahead of the rest of the crowd before taking off again? Because if you had the ability to do that, it would have been _swell_ if you’d managed it just a little sooner.” His hand clenched tighter where it was still resting on Peter’s shoulder, his focus shifting back to him, “Kid, do you even know how long it’s been?”

“Yeah, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, smiling sadly back at him. “Longer then you’d think.”

“’Tony’ was fine, Pete,” he replied absently, trying to read that look on his face. There was something in his expression, some form of grief, that didn’t seem to fit what Tony would have expected.

“We’re not ‘taking off’,” Strange broke in to his thoughts. “ _We’re_ taking off. Quickly. Really, don’t get sappy Stark, this is the one possible time we have.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You’ll go,” a soft female voice said, this one entirely unfamiliar. A green head peeked shyly around Strange’s shoulder; a Skrull, Tony’s mind supplied, he’d met one once before when Danvers had shown up at his doorstep with a small escape pod that needed repairing and a claim that he owed her one. Which he did, so he’d made sure to throw in as many bells and whistles as he could think of. “I’ll stay,” the girl finished.

Strange stepped to the side to reveal her entirely. She was tall, but bone-thin in a way Tony would have found unhealthy on a human but had no way to read in an alien. “This is Ameera. She’s dying.”

“And, what, you want me to give you advice on life support devices? I’m pretty sure you’d know more about that than me, Doc.”

“I’m dying,” the girl repeated, her tone placidly accepting, “and I was never able to do anything at all with my life but hide. I’d like it, very much, if at least my death could be something worthwhile.”

Tony pulled his attention away from the cryptic duo to the one person he could trust would at least try to give him a straight answer. Peter looked decidedly miserable, and Tony could hear his own tone gentling as he said, “Pete?”

“Ms. Danvers was only able to get them off the planet her group had been stuck on for years a little while ago, and it was _really_ not a good place for Skrulls. Like, imagine you crash-landed in Chernobyl, except Chernobyl was the whole world. And it was thirty years ago. Dr. Strange can only change things in the past if nobody would be able to tell there’s a change. He can only save a life if… if everyone still sees that life end.”

Tony could feel the weight of understanding sinking into him, almost staggering beneath the force of it. “So, when Bruce uses the stones something goes wrong and I…” Then he forced himself straighter, shaking his head quickly. “No. No, fine, that’s fine. I have things ready, I said my goodbyes if I need them, Pete you can’t think I’d let some poor kid die for me. We’ll work out some other solution, she can… Ameera, was it? Ameera, you can have a chance at a worthwhile life, you don’t need to try to get meaning out of your death. Friday, run a diagnostic on the green kid hanging around the party magician.”

“Friday, disregard that last instruction,” and his eyes snapped back to where the green girl had vanished and in her place left himself. Exactly himself, as he heard Friday acknowledge the command, every secret biometric sensor that she had to make sure she only took orders from the right people fooled with ease.

“Tony Stark, Ameera will die without fail within the next several weeks,” Strange said, in a tone as cold as a tomb. “She will die alone and in pain on an escape ship where everyone she loves is too busy evading a Kree cruiser to be with her in her last moments, or she will die surrounded by caring people attempting to give her comfort while knowing that she’s just saved all of existence, and that in her own time everyone will know of her sacrifice. It’s your choice.”

“Okay. Wow. Well, that’s sure a way to make a guy feel like a monster for wanting to save some poor girl’s life. You must have won awards for your bedside manner, didn't you, saying things like that in front of your patients?” Tony said, then gave Strange a hard look, “Still no, though. Go back another day. Get Nat.”

“We weren’t planning on abandoning her, Tony,” Peter cut in softly. “This is a, uh, a test run. A _lot_ of people saw what happened to you, and everyone was willing to share their memories with her to make sure she gets it exactly right.”

“You’re very loved,” she agreed with his mouth, a weird experience, “Not a single person we asked didn’t gladly let us pull from their recollection of today.”

“No, I’m very useful, there’s a difference,” Tony corrected her, then at Peter’s wounded look found himself adding, “I mean, I know some of you would like me to stick around for more than seeing the next cool goody I cook up in my lab, but I’m sure the Bug Guy out there isn’t getting all warm and squishy inside when he thinks of me.”

“If this works Black Widow is next on the list to try, we’re just not _totally_ sure the Soul Stone will go with it if you only _think_ you’re losing someone you love. And Dr. Strange won’t say.”

“ _Can’t_ say,” Strange corrected sharply. “I’m not being deliberately cryptic on this one, Parker, even if I still had the Time Stone the Soul Stone’s domain was shrouded. Without it I’m as blind as anyone else about what might happen.” Then he flung out a hand, a sparking yellow portal appearing in the air beside him. “20 seconds before one of you walks out that door, Stark. Try to make the right choice, and give the poor kid your suit on the way out the door so she can do what you need to do.”

Peter stretched out a hand to him, eyes pleading, “Please, Tony.”

Part of him was vaguely aware that if there was one shape shifter in the room there might well be three, after his suit for who could even say what reason. But most of him couldn’t possibly go against that look. He grabbed Peter’s hand and allowed himself to be pulled towards the portal, prying the nanocontainer on his chest off and passing it to his Ameera on the way. “If you need to use it you—”

“I know,” she said, miming tapping in the air above her chest and giving him a slight smile that looked wrong on his own lips. “I’ve watched every move you make in the last hour of your life a hundred times over, Tony Stark. I know everything that I need to do.”

“Well, that’s a little creepy. Any last minute questions? Anything you need to know straight from the man himself?”

“Oh, I do!” Peter unexpectedly piped up. “Any chance you have the note you left with EDITH nearby and could stick on a PPS that says something like ‘I mean you, idiot, don’t trust strange men just because they remind you of me’?”

“ _What?_ ” Tony barked.

At exactly the same time Strange said, “Too late!” and widened the portal to envelope the three of them. “Good try at warping the entire timeline though, Parker, I’m sure that wouldn’t have had unforeseen repercussions at all,” he added what seemed like only a heartbeat later when they were spat out the other side.

There was no time to ask for any further clarification, because whatever strange men might have taken advantage of a resemblance to him paled in importance to a sudden heartbreaking wail of “ _Daddy!_ ” and a girl now tall enough to reach his shoulder flinging herself into his arms while sobbing too hard to say anything more.

“Squirt?” he said softly, smoothing back her hair and trying to get a good look at her, but she seemed to be crying too hard to want to pry her face away from his shirt. He wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders instead, laughing slightly as he planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Guess we’ll need to work on a new nickname, huh? You ever get into sports? Should we give ‘Slugger’ a try?” Then he glanced around, frowning slightly. “Where’s Pep? She’s still okay, right?”

“She’s up in her office,” Peter told him, tone slightly hesitant as he spoke. “She, uh, she said she didn’t want to make your reunion awkward.”

A thing or two suddenly clicked together in Tony’s mind. “Pete, I can’t imagine you’d grow up to be the type of guy who would…” For Morgan’s sake, assuming she didn’t need to hear about anyone macking on her daddy, he gestured vaguely towards his mouth then tapped his wedding ring, making Peter flush without needing any words at all. “And since my little girl suddenly doubled in height, I’m guessing you didn’t come back and get me a month after we brought everything back, right? …She’s moved on.”

“Don’t blame Mom, Daddy,” Morgan unexpectedly got enough control over her tears to say, though she hiccuped throughout the words. She peeked up at him, finally giving him a look at the face still too twisted by the overwhelming release of old despair she was going through for him to clearly make out what the young woman she’d become looked like, except that she was as beautiful as his little girl had always been. “She’s just as glad as we are that you’re back. It’s just been a long time. A really long time.”

“We’ll talk about what happened. And what my apparently being a… divorcee? Is that the right word for this situation? What that could mean for it later,” he told Peter, before turning his full attention to Morgan. “Right after you tell me _everything_ you’ve done for however long it’s been, right from when you chose Lucky Charms over Applejacks that morning.”

He’d missed getting to see her expression when life came back to the world, and he was sure it would have been worth seeing. But absolutely nothing was worth more than getting to see the look on her face at seeing her father alive when she’d thought he was gone forever.

That was a trade-off he would make any day of the week.


End file.
